Last update - 01:15 20/05/2003
People and Politics / Troublemaking peacemakers
By Akiva Eldar
Two years ago, the Jewish-Arab cooperative peace group Ta'ayush adopted the residents of Hirbat, south of Mt. Hebron. Every few weeks a group of peace activists goes to the fields of the little village of Tuwana, whose land is being greedily eyed by extremist settlers. Sometimes they act as human shields for the Palestinian farmers who try to work their land. Other times they accompany school children on their way to elementary school, to protect them from settlers on the dusty roads leading to the school. A small group sometimes spends weekends in the company of the villagers.
Ta'ayush's intervention sometimes forces the army to send troops to protect the farmers from settler thugs who use their guns to expel the farmers from their lands. But lately, the activists have encountered Israeli soldiers blocking their way to the village, showing them an order that it's a closed military area. Sometimes, standing alongside the soldiers are armed settlers from the nearby outposts. For them, of course, the area is not military or closed.
For weeks, the IDF Spokesman's Office has refrained from commenting on the strange phenomenon of discrimination between one type of Jew and another (discrimination between Jew and Arab is old hat, like dog bites man). And maybe the news is that the IDF has decided to put an end to the discrimination between foreign peace activists, who have been formally banned from the territories, and their Israeli counterparts.
Last Friday, a group of soldiers stopped the Ta'ayush cars on Route 60, on their way to Tuwana. Brigadier General Amos Ben-Avraham, commander of the Judea Corps command, presented a military order preventing the peace activists from proceeding further. This time they had a video camera with them. A synopsis of the events, from the videotape, follows, instead of the IDF spokesman's statement, which is still not forthcoming:
Ben-Avraham: Maybe you'll stop filming.
Activist A.: If the IDF prevents peace activists from reaching the area, I think the world should know about it.
Ben-Avraham: The IDF does not prevent peace activists from reaching the area.
Activist A.: But here, that's what you're doing right now.
Ben-Avraham: I don't know if you are a peace activist. I do more for peace than you do.
Activist A.: What can an occupying army do for peace?
Ben-Avraham: This is not an occupation army. This is the army ... the army of the State of Israel. Four people were murdered right here. We're here next to each other and I have to keep things quiet.
Activist A. You don't even know what's going on in your own district, you didn't know the children are harassed on this road nearly every day.
Ben-Avraham: I didn't know because I didn't see it ...
Activist A.: Then maybe there are a lot of things that happen here and you don't see. When we aren't here, armed settlers come to the village and conduct mini-pogroms, like shooting a 73-year-old shepherdess who went out with her sheep. I don't see anything that should prevent us from visiting our friends, just as there are a lot of people who travel here to visit their friends at the Maon outpost. You don't stop them.
Ben-Avraham: We're thinking about how to keep things quiet and prevent the noise that will break out tomorrow because of your arrival here.
Activist A.: Why should there be any noise as a result of our visit?
Ben-Avraham: That's our experience.
Activist A.: When we come, the settlers come and they are the violent ones. Your job is to arrest those who are violent, and not those who come with pure motives.
Ben-Avraham: I'm not here to conduct a dialogue with you ... that fellow [he looks at Activist B., who continued filming] is making me very nervous. He's disgusting and arrogant.
Activist A.: I'm more bothered by your soldier who stopped us on false pretenses.
Activist C.: Maybe we can reach an agreement?
Ben-Avraham: No agreement. To keep things quiet, you can't be here.
The officer gets into his vehicle and drives away. The Ta'ayush activists return to their cars and head home. The hilltop thugs grin from ear to ear.